a reminder
Back when I joined the steemit blockchain platform in December 2017, I made this #introduceyourself post as per the custom there. I've been exceedingly dissolute of self recently, forgetting who I am so this post is going to serve as a kind of reintroduction of myself to myself with the intent of reminding me of me.
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In blatant truth, I have been fairly wrecked since the plandemic begin and in turn forgot many aspects of who I once was; what I loved, where I went, how I sought meaning and when I pushed life to its extremes. My byline on my online blogs is "Art, Writing and Investigation," my pseudonym @aagabriel denotes the Arch Angel Gabriel, an angel of communication and foresight whom I resonate with and the title of my substack newsletter is "Elucidating the Obfuscated."
All these are aspects of who I am and aspects of what I value. The plandemic hasn't changed any of these aspects, but it’s drawn me away from these foundations. For the sake of a happier, fulfilling present and future existence I have to reconnect!
Art
And how I need it back
After graduating high school I went to art college and enrolled in their Fine Arts diploma. Being straight out of high school and going straight into a far more fluid, conceptual and realistically impractical field of study was wonderful for a young adult like me. Head brimming with the kaleidoscopic chaos experienced between adolescence and emancipation towards adulthood and being encouraged to express as much of it as I could.
In hindsight it was one of the last periods of naivety and innocent play I'd experience before a reality of entering real life into adulthood where money, bills, relationships, hierarchies, abuses (of self and others; as victim, as perpetrator, as survivor) became de rigeur.
I maintained a steady devotion to the Fine Arts and live music in particular; enjoying creating the prior, dabbling in creation of the latter and being a voracious patron of both. I particularly enjoyed dancing and live music - spent the best years of my 20's living in several different capital cities of Australia, all which had their own unique music scenes.
I always said after leaving a life of party days on the East Coast behind, that I had already lived my best life and could exit our corporeal coil without regrets. The memories of some of those most wild, anarchic, unique and extreme music events (possibly uniquely occurring at only that time and place anywhere in the world) are memories I still treasure. I still have my collection of Rave flyers, stack of photos, live recorded dj sets and fond memories as keepsakes. It goes beyond nostalga for me - it was a way of life - as essential as breathing fresh air.
I still have my art supplies; enough to furnish a decent painting and drawing studio. Some of these art materials I've kept since art college, some are even from my primary and high school years and there's also a lot of paintings I've dragged with me around the country under the pretence of completing them one day. I've gifted a lot of these to friends around Australia and the world: it's of some comfort knowing that there's a piece of me retained with people I valued and had meaningful relationships with but that brings me to why making art today became anathema for me.
Unfortunately, and partly due to the plandemic, what I haven't retained is all the weird, wonderful and beloved friends I made through my art, through early online chatrooms (#mIRC represent!), through music events and elsewhere through my worldly voyages. This is because I deleted facebook sometime in late 2020 after receiving a 30 day ban for providing risk advice and a heartfelt warning to my old flatmate in Sydney.
I told her to not take the astrazeneca mRNA covid injectable that was available at the time in Australia. I told her this on the basis that Astrazeneca had already caused adverse events & a death (if I remember correctly?), and I emphasized how unknown mRNA covid injectable gene therapies of any kind had no liability behind them, nor any clinical testing with human trials: therefore informed consent could not be given. Therefore you should not take it as the risk of the unknowns was obviously incomparable to the risk of the knowns.
The banning by facebook was it for me. I deleted my account and literally lost easy contact with hundreds upon hundreds of friends and family from around the world. Looking back now, I really miss some of those friends and family, I should make an effort to reconnect with them directly. At least to see whether they survived the various #lockdown, #covid-19 #plandemic measures that were inflicted upon them, inflicted upon all of us. It's hard though as currently I'm not anyone and I feel incapable of answering certain questions I'd probably be asked such as; How are you? What are you doing now? Are you still making art? Are you working? Are you happy? Are you with anyone? Are you single?
The closest friends I had, the ones most supportive of me were also the ones whom inspired, goaded and cajoled me, loved me. It's them closest to me then who would be disappointed most in hearing I'm not making any art at all and haven't for years.
So I realize that as much as I miss my friends that I've distanced myself from because of the Covid-19 #plandemic, I'm missing myself as a creative spirit who was once zealously and passionately devoted to his continued evolution of expression via imaginative artworks and writing.
Writing
And what I'm missing
The few family and friends that have contacted me since the #plandemic haven't seem interested in my online articles, investigations or other writing. Can't blame them: I have a tendency to be transparent on my thoughts by disregarding proper modicums of etiquette. Spontaneity in my creative expressions through visual artworks was once desired and admired yet my refusal of acquiescence to social norms, avoidance of taboos or painful truths stated too plainly through what I write is not quite as easy to consume by a friendly audience.
The #plandemic has fucked my sense of internal tact when it comes to writing and at times it's made me hate myself because I've just written something that is intractable in it's message and indelible in its truth - and that is why no one wanted to read it. Still, I was determined to turn this into a career instead of a devoted passion which potentially provides supplementary income. But I didn't achieve this writerly career, so I guess I'm kinda ashamed of myself for that..
Ashamed because.. those friends, lovers, the greater circle which I called my east coast family would be holding memories of when I was more zesty and full of life - bursting with creativity, busting out dance moves and being the best person I could be to them, for them so we could continue slurping up as much life we could together, having the times of our lives!
I enjoyed having so many friends of all walks of life on the east coast: it was easy for me to be blessed enough socially to have an east coast family . In all honesty it was easy for me because I never judged anyone and in turn learned how valuable such a trait was in a scene-driven, showy city such as Sydney. Yep, and today I'm full of excoriating judgment for all and sundry, scorn unto self and same. And I hate that aspect of myself.
I do wonder how Roscoe is doing most of all, I liked him the most out of everyone in my east coast family. But I haven't attempted to contact him: I fear any news he has suffered or potentially lost his life. Last time I spoke to him, he ditched a suffocating process line engineer career to become a high-rise window washer. He was very excited about this and I could envision his tall, stoic frame hauling ass along the ropes and cages while straddling immense skyscrapers gleaming in reflected sunlight, admiring the breath-taking view of Sydney Harbour, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House. Him drinking that in while perched hundreds of metres in the air, precariously swaying from the Southerly Buster gales blowing in at 5pm sharp - totally stalwart and strong in the face of it all - minimal expression on the outside while internally his brilliant mind recalled a rare optimistic quote of Theodore Dalrymple’s, or remembers a time where he and I were illegally scaling condemned buildings, giant monolithic breweries while intoxicated. So recklessly balanced on edges of steel and girder, perched on cliffs in pitch blackness yet still stepping forward, alcohol-dulled senses sheared to sharpness through our 4am adrenaline rush of urban exploration..
I got to know him very well during my Sydney years and eagerly looked forward to catching up with him each time I returned for holidays. My fear of his present state seems unfounded but I can't erase the notion that he, being a high-rise window washer during a time that Sydney was tortured by obscenely cruel and tyrannical lockdowns, may have suffered a similar fate to a much beloved Australian actor who was really an icon of my generation: Dieter Brummer, the teen heart throb and star of Aussie soap series, Home and Away.
Dieter Brummer committed suicide just days into the first Sydney lockdown of 2021 and was promptly forgotten. I find this extremely tragic for all Australians who remember his beautifully Aussie role as Shane Parrish in Home and Away. I remember watching Home and Away in the 1990's and admiring how likable and liked he was. He was the kind of character you wanted as a really good mate - he exuded affability, sweetness and boyish charm.
Roscoe was kinda like Dieter's character in Home and Away in a lot of ways and one way in particular that was uncanny: according to the news at the time, Dieter was very excited to be starting a new career as a high-rise window washer.
..It's irrational for me to link these two men but the link dwells on my mind. I've been wanting to complete a drafted article where I detailed x3 of the horrifying suicides which occurred during the first Sydney and Melbourne lockdowns: Dieter's was one of the three and I'm compelled to write about all 3 because these suicides were barely covered in the mainstream media at the time, and once they were, then they were promptly forgotten. I haven't been able to forget, only set aside my drafted thoughts on what is a first of many extreme tragedies Australians suffered during the #plandemic. #OpStopSuicide
Maybe I should try contacting Roscoe first, see whether my irrational fears are proven false. Maybe it'd be such a relief that I could then allow myself to plow on and finish writing that goddamn awful article. Maybe some of my east coast family friends would read it, and get it..
Regardless of all the maybes, I miss Roscoe very much and should give myself permission to try contacting him - instead of being paranoid, ashamed, fearful.
You can see how the last few years of isolation and negativity has fostered an inherently self-destructive frame of mind. Therefore, I shall write to right myself out of such a frame of mind. Therefore, I'm a little closer to reminding myself of myself.
Investigation
Do I know how to reveal what I don’t know yet?
My last passion is the one that's consumed me the most of late. It's the one that's been obviously detrimental to; an overall sense of wellbeing, relationships, love for life or love for others. Or love of self.
I've become brazenly cynical regarding my present situation and how it's directly caused by the #plandemic as well as wholly pessimistic on how societal obeisance to authority appears to have been so effortlessly achieved. At one point I resigned myself to suffering the same set of negative outcomes society will suffer because the standard of my social contract was in reality stolen through society’s non-informed consent for it to be stolen.
Infact, could that moreso prove that society’s reality of informed consent was gifted to our oppressors!?
This society is a society that not so much conceded informed consent because of its refusal to be given by #pharmaganda pushing #publichealth militiamen, inasmuch as it is a society who so eagerly disavowed their own rights of refusal by refusing to retain a standard of social contract that required informed consent.
I have investigated how such a defilement of human self-determination and sacrifice of individuality could manifest in pretty much the entire planet and this investigation concluded nothing worth knowing, really.
Knowing the conclusion of society’s saving grace and soul retained as essence for millenia being sold off for a damaging, demoralizing, depressing, disablement of human expression, potentially forevermore. Humanity abhumanised as The New Normal?
Do you really think investigating root causes or any guiding principles which manifested the greatest hoodwinking of human civilizations in our history is worth knowing? A rhetorical question (i know) but those who know, know. Those who knew prior to the #plandemic probably keenly feel more than ever the vitality humans are able to provide for each other, or how vital it is to know those like them on a human level.
My realizing such a diabolically and soul-eviscerating facet of our Abhumanity’s New Normal was how cold it is to realize that those who know (are in most of our collective cases) not those we know in real life. So in a way we remain unknown to one another and on darker days it feels like we're destined to remain unknown to one another forever.
It's hard to express clearly: I feel barren of kinship outside of an increasingly frustrating and unsatisfying paradigm representing itself as digital family and friends. Sure, I have a handful of knowing in-real-life friends today, but as I've expressed throughout this piece, I had a lot more from all walks of life and from many different places around the world prior to the #plandemic.
Writing this I'm left with a sour lemon of a thought in my imaginary hands: does it matter if all those friends and family I miss, know? Does it matter if they know that I know and they know I may be distant because of that? Are we both thinking that the other does not know?
Yet are we still yearning to, you know, do that normal thing we used to do once upon a time, communicate easily with each other? Find out what the other might know? Investigate as to whether those we once knew may still be worth knowing?
I don't know the answer to that but I wont be caught up in digital paradigms where most of us are literally corralled into accepting a specious neo-para-social connectivity as prime condition for communication. I don't know how to regain my humanity but the process of writing this has given me a rough draft of the path to take. A path I’ve already described but one to start walking on in reverse.
I've started with an investigation made through a process of writing out quite personal aspects via a kind of stream of consciousness artform.
Where this artform ends, no one knows and I'm glad for it to remain incomplete at present. I’m glad I wrote this, very glad!
I'm also glad if you have read through it and seen some aspect of your own inchoate thoughts expressed here. It's a journey and I'm glad to be still here riding on it.
It's easy and desirable by our masters to demoralize and isolate us. Men that know themselves naturally attract followings, and demoralized men are questing for themselves. However, you demonstrate you know yourself by posting your essentials here. It is advisable to separate the wheat from the chaff of our quests, allow the knowledge of yourself simply to be, and quest for knowledge of what you must learn to cope with the challenges you must overcome.
There comes a realization, sooner or later, that herding sheep is the occupation of husbandmen, and running with a pack is the occupation of the free that will not be husbanded. Don't concern yourself with the opinions of sheep, but seek the council of your fellows, who will thrive by their powers of discernment and the application of their hands.
The truth is a lion, and needs no defense. Sharing it with sheep extracts the profit potential to your pack that can avail one another of useful understanding the coming egalitarian meritocracy will build on. Skip the waste of your time countering the commands of sheepdogs will inevitably prove to be, and cut straight to the chase of adopting independent means that are wealth and freedom.
Thanks!
Hey Valued customer. That's a wonderful, thought-out remoralizing comment and I do truly appreciate it.
I guess I was able to express myself clearly enough for you to piledrive your advice home into that nook and cranny where I needed it.
Sometimes you just need to be told! And you have reminded me of a fellow art graduate student whom was my studio space neighbour in the photo I've used. She saw what I was doing all over my walls and gave me a quote she wrote in calligraphy on a fresh sheet of paper.
Thanks again😊
oh and i've also cleaned up the grammar a bit on my article
You should do more art, it's very cathartic 😊